And Then a Bit More

Meetings usually mean Haidian or Chaoyang.  The prior is a forty-five-minute ride.  The latter is an hour plus.  I was ever so pleased as today when I was notified that the meeting which I needed to head to was in . . . Shunyi.  Yes, there are companies out here.  I don’t know why they are out here.  I can only imagine that most of their employees are rather frustrated that they are located out here.  But staring down a twenty-minute ride, just out beyond the airport I had nothing but two thumbs skyward. 

The driver deposited me in front of an enormous hangar-like construction.  To the north was another enormous building of similar size.  I called my colleague who essentially told me, “yeah, I’m in the enormous building.”  The driver confirmed, that this was all but certainly the enormous building in question.   I walked by an unimpressive security guard who didn’t bother me and stood outside a lobby that was conspicuously devoid of my colleague. 

Called him.  “Hey, I’m in the lobby’’ “So am I.”  I know enough Beijing geography wherever I am to say what’s north and what’s south.  And eventually he discerned where it was that I was standing, and he walked through the big hanger-like building and met me.  He had a Starbucks cup in his hand, and I asked him to take me to this Starbucks first, before our meeting.  But alas, he’d had it from an earlier meal, before we’d met and was simply lugging it around.

Riding home my colleague had some bad news.  And then, a bit more.  I had some good news.  But the bad news lingered on and it made me edgy.  Why did we have so much bad news?  It’s tiring. 

Monday, 4/29/19